ited him.

"What, Baptiste," said he, "have you burnt your opera? You were a fool
for giving such credit to a gloomy confessor, and burning such good
music."

"Hush! hush!" whispered Lulli, "I knew well what I was about,--I have
another copy of it!"

But this was not all. Unhappily, this joke was followed by a relapse,
and the prospect of certain death caused him such dreadful remorse for
his deceit to the priest, that he confessed all, and submitted to be
laid on a heap of ashes, with a cord around his neck, which was the
penance recommended him! He was then placed in bed, and expired
singing, "_Il faut mourir, pecheur, il faut mourir!_" to one of his own
airs.

Many anecdotes are told about Lulli, of which we will repeat one or two.

So fatal was the influence of success and its attendant fortune upon
Lulli's career, that he entirely laid aside his violin, and refused to
have such a thing in his house, nor could any one prevail upon him to
play upon one. Marshal de Gramont, however, was his match. He
determined not to be entirely deprived of his favourite treat, and
devised the ingenious plan of making one of his servants, who could
bring more noise than music out of the instrument, play upon the violin
in Lulli's presence; whereupon the ex-violinist would rush to the
unfortunate tormentor, snatch the fiddle from him, and seek to allay
his disturbed equanimity (which, much to the delight of those within
hearing, always took him a long time to accomplish) by playing himself.

At the first performance of "Armide," at Versailles, some delay
prevented the raising of the curtain at the appointed hour. The king,
thereupon, sent an officer of his guard, who said to Lulli, "The king
is waiting," and was answered with the words, "The king is master here,
and nobody has the right to prevent him waiting as long as he likes!"

Hippolyte de la Charlerie, who painted Lulli as a boy in the kitchen of
"La Grande Mademoiselle," was a Belgian artist, who died young, in
1869, the same year that he sent this picture to the Paris Salon.

STRADIVARIUS.

Crowest, the English writer on musical subjects, says: "Two hundred
years ago, the finest violins that the world will probably ever have
were being turned out from the Italian workshops; while at about the
same time, and subsequently, there was issuing from the homes of music
in Germany, the music for these superb instruments,--music not for any
one age, 'but for all